Amnesty official in Russia plans to meet Snowden

FILE - In this file photo taken Friday, June 28, 2013, a Russian supporter of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden holds a poster outside Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. Leaker Snowden has been caught in legal limbo in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23. The U.S. has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he has hoped to get asylum, says it may take months to rule on his case. Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Monday, July 1, 2013, that Snowden will have to stop leaking U.S. secrets if he wants to get asylum in Russia, but added that Snowden has no plan to stop leaking. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)

FILE - In this Monday, July 1, 2013 file photo Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a news conference after the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow on a flight from Hong Kong on June 23, but he has been out of the public eye and his circumstances and plans are murky. President Vladimir Putin said that Snowden could stay in Russia on condition he stop leaking U.S. secrets. Putin's spokesman later said Snowden had withdrawn his request for asylum after learning the terms. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian official of Amnesty International says he plans to meet with Edward Snowden, the leaker of U.S. National Security Agency secrets.

Sergei Nikitin, head of the rights organization's Russia office, told The Associated Press the meeting would take place Friday, but he declined to say where. However, the head of the Moscow lawyers' association, Genri Reznik, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the meeting has been called for 4:30 p.m. (1230 GMT) at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.

Snowden is believed to have been stuck in the transit zone at Sheremetyevo as he negotiates for asylum in another country.

Russian news agencies reported that Snowden had called on several organizations, among them Transparency International and Human Rights Watch, to meet with him at the airport. Reznik told Interfax that he had also received the invitation and would try to go.

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The deputy head of HRW's Moscow office, Tatiana Loshkina, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying it was unclear if she would go to the meeting. Phone calls to Transparency International went unanswered.

Snowden has not been seen in public since arriving in Moscow from Hong Kong, where he had fled before his leaks about American Internet surveillance were made public.

Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have said they would be willing to grant asylum to Snowden. But it is unclear if Snowden could fly from Moscow to any of those countries without passing through the airspace of the United States or allied countries.

Reznik, the lawyer, said he expected Snowden called for the meeting in order to seek asylum in Russia.

Snowden made an earlier application for Russian asylum. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said asylum would be conditional on Snowden stopping leaking U.S. secrets; Snowden then withdrew his asylum bid, Russian officials said.